IDATE presents four major awards to leading global operators

Details: Staff Writer; Category: Blogs & Opinion; 04 March 2026; 12610 views

During MWC 2026, a leading European consulting company, IDATE, held the Green All-optical Network Forum 2026. During the forum, IDATE presented four major awards to 17 world’s leading operators.

The awards include:

1. Best Practice of Home Broadband Development Award

This award is set to recognize operators with excellent practices in gigabit HBB service development or 10G service innovation and commercial use. Technologies such as 10G PON were introduced for large-scale deployment of gigabit networks and lay a solid foundation for comprehensive upgrade to ultra-giga networks with 50G PON in near future. Innovative home broadband packages such as home networking were released to enrich user experience and lead the service development in local markets.

The final award is presented to Orange, China Telecom, PLDT Inc., and Algérie Télécom.

2. Ultra-Broadband Resilient Network for AI Development Award

This award is set to recognize operators with outstanding practices in all-optical network architecture, technological innovation and application, support for DCI, and networked computing & computing power utilization. The winner operators support the rapid popularization of AI applications and seize the opportunity of AI era use with the leading all-optical network. With innovations on key technologies and network architectures such as 400G/800G, 3D-Mesh architecture, all-optical switching, 100G to CO, and ASON, users can access data centers with millisecond-level latency, and requirements from AI training and inference such as ultra-high bandwidth and ultra-high reliability are met.

The final award goes to Fastweb, China Mobile, AZTELEKOM LLC, and MTN Nigeria Communication PLC.

02 Ultra Broadband Resilient Network for AI Development Award

3. AI-Oriented Business Innovation and Premium User Experience Award

This award is set to operators with excellent practices in fixed broadband user experience operations and widely recognized network quality in the market. They actively embrace AI services and continuously improve user experience to bring huge brand value enhancement and business returns. They provide bandwidth above gigabit to bring various AI services to homes and enterprises quickly. Home network such as FTTR are deployed to enable optimal network experience. In addition, service boundaries expansion becomes possible based on those network advantages, from providing connection only to integrating connection and applications.

The final award is presented to Zain Group, China Unicom, Globe Telecom Inc., and CTM Macau.

03 AI oriented business innovation award

4. Leading Sustainable Network Operator Award

This award is set to commend operators that achieve sustainable network development through energy efficiency improvement and carbon emission reduction in network construction and service operations. For example, by replacing DSL or cable networks by FTTx, and upgrading legacy SDH/switch networks to OTN, the FTTH penetration is enhanced and the power consumption of telecom networks is greatly reduced. In addition, popularity of optical networks accelerates the service cloudification and digital transformation of enterprise users, indirectly saving energy and reducing emissions in more industries, supporting the sustainable development of the whole society.

The final award goes to MasOrange, Turkcell Corp, du, Lounea, and Ooredoo Qatar.

04 Leading Sustainable Network Operator Award

Please check the mini-site and social media posts from IDATE to learn the reasons and details about the award: https://idate.fr/green-all-optical-network-forum/